This invention relates to photographic film processing equipment and more particularly relates to a strip cutter having a multiposition rotatable cutting blade which can also act as a strip segment deflector. The invention is herein illustratively described in its preferred form and application; however, it will be recognized that modifications and variations therein may be made without departing from the essential features involved.
In the photographic film processing industry, the exposed and developed film negatives that are returned to the customer after a roll of film is processed are generally in the form of multi-frame strips of film up to four frames in length. If the customer desires to have additional photographs printed from the negatives, the customer returns the negative strip or strips containing the desired frames to be printed to the photofinisher. In order to be able to batch process a number of these film negative strips in a continuous operation, the strips are adhesively bonded by one longitudinal margin in endwise serial positions on a continuous tabbing strip for winding the same on a storage reel permitting the film strips to be run through the printing apparatus.
After the selected frame photographs have been printed, and before returning the negative strips to the customer it is necessary to separate the individual strips and place them in customer delivery envelopes. The simplest and most efficient method yet found for separating the negative strips is imply to sever the tabbing material between adjacent negative strips for return to the customers with the tabbing material still attached.
For reasons of economic practicality the customer delivery envelopes referred to are of standard size and are of a length just sufficient to accommodate strip lengths up to and including that of four-frame 35 mm. strips (i.e. the standard maximum length of negative film submitted for printing). However, when the film strips are originally bonded to the tabbing strip gaps are left between the ends of the successive film strips. Therefore, when a four-frame segmental length of the tabbing strip is severed at the ends of the associated film strip so as to fit the customer envelope, a byproduct requiring separate disposal is produced in the form of the short connecting tabbing strip segment or chip that spanned the gap to the next film strip segment mounted on the tabbing strip. The present invention is illustratively described in its application to severing the tabbing strip at the required locations and in conjunction therewith segregating the byproduct tabbing strip gap lengths for separate disposal.
Machines have been produced for the automatic cutting of the tabbing material strips; however, in prior machines both the negatives and the unwanted tabbing material chips have been dilivered by the cutting machine to a common receptacle and it has been left for an operator to manually sort the usable and returnable negative strips from the unwanted tabbing material chips prior to placing the negative strips in the envelope for return to the customer. The photofinishing industry operates on very high production volumes of film processed each day, and it is desirable to automate the film handling as much as possible both to cut labor costs and to shorten processing tim. It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a strip cutter that automatically feeds and cuts the film-bearing tabbing strip into film-bearing segments and that selectively and mechanically segregates from the film-bearing segments the short lengths or chips of tabbing strip material occurring between adjacent strips of film.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a strip cutter that can automatically cut out and separately dispose of short lengths of tabbing material from between adjacent film strips or segments.
It is another object of this invention to provide a relatively simple and reliable mechanism achieving these purposes with a minimum number of parts utilizing the cutting blade itself as a means of separating the severed tabbing chips from the film strips.
It is another object of this invention to provide such a strip cutter and deflector mechanism capable of performing its functions rapidly and with minimum interruption in the ongoing advancement of the composite strip being severed.